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What Writing Advice Would You Give to Your Younger Writing Self?

Many of you have been writing for a long while, been traditionally published through big and/or boutique houses, or self-published. All of these struggles have brought knowledge gained through experience.

For discussion – What advice would you give your younger writing self when you were first starting out? Knowing what you do now, please give your top 3 tips.

About Jordan Dane

Bestselling, critically-acclaimed author Jordan Dane’s gritty thrillers are ripped from the headlines with vivid settings, intrigue, and dark humor. Publishers Weekly compared her intense novels to Lisa Jackson, Lisa Gardner, and Tami Hoag, naming her debut novel NO ONE HEARD HER SCREAM as Best Books of 2008. She is the author of young-adult novels written for Harlequin Teen, the Sweet Justice thriller series for HarperCollins., and the Ryker Townsend FBI psychic profiler series, Mercer's War vigilante novellas, and the upcoming Trinity LeDoux bounty hunter novels set in New Orleans. Jordan shares her Texas residence with two lucky rescue dogs. To keep up with new releases & exclusive giveaways, click HERE

1) Be kind and honest to yourself, simultaneously. Only then you will be able to be kind and honest with others and in your writing.
2) Don’t look for your voice. You have one already. And it’s always changing. Discover it in each moment anew.
3) Pay attention to your fun-detecting-antenna. Fun is not a bonus, it is a must, and a tool to guide you both in learning how to write and actually writing.

1) Keep track of EVERYTHING. Don’t wait for a 6 book deal to decide your book might end up part of a series. Characters, yes, but also the details that will come back to bite you. Recurring settings. Vocabulary. Everything.

2) If you’re serious, writing is a job. Treat it as such. (But yes, it has to be fun.)

Wow, easy. You’ll forgive me the use of the royal we since I’m talking to myself here.

1. Follow (adhere to) Heinlein’s Rules.
2. Trust your subconscious mind. It’s been telling stories since before we were aware there was an alphabet.
3. Drop into the story and run through it with the characters (vs. being The Almighty Writer on High). Act as their recorder. Remember it’s their story, not ours. They’re living it.

1. Don’t think your first novel is the greatest story ever written and a publisher will instantly snap it up.
2. No matter how much talent people say you have, it still takes at least 10,000 hours of practice to proficiency.
3. Go back and thank those mean old critics who told you the truth you didn’t want to hear back then.

1. Write the damn story. (Yes, that again.) Improving your skills through classes and workshops is fine–maybe even necessary–but reading about writing and talking about writing is not, in fact, writing. Tie butt to chair. Write. Revise. Repeat.

2. Accept and embrace the fact that your first story (or the first three, in my case) will suck. As long as successive stories suck less than the preceding ones, you’re making progress. Writing is a craft, and there is no better teacher than a swing and a miss.

3. Remember that it’s only a story. It is not your identity, and it’s not your job (yet). Criticism is not personal. Family and bill-paying activities must always come first.

I agree with so much of what others have said. Here are a few thoughts:

1. Find a way to write more when you’re younger. The years fly by. One day you’ll wake up and wonder if you’ll have enough to time left to write all the stories inside you. It’s sad when you have to say, “Maybe not.”

2. Don’t let anyone tell you that the arts are unimportant. Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg once said (paraphrased): A doctor bragged at a party that being a doctor was better than being a musician because doctors save lives. Her reply: “Yes, but musicians make life worth living.” Writing, music, and the arts are worthwhile pursuits. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

3. Read less. Write more. Divide your time. If you’re always reading, you’re not writing. No regrets about the time spent editing/beta reading, because analyzing the work of others is educational.

4. Take more acting classes, even if it means you have to get down on the floor and pretend you’re a piece of bacon in a frying pan while you’re wearing a dress. Don’t ask.

I love “Write…fail…write more…fail more…write better…fail better”. Brilliant! 🙂 There is always progress, in everything. Even failure is not absolute. And we can choose to see it as a valuable lesson and not something negative. 🙂 “fail better” made me grin happily. 😀